What's the Question - Tried it Tuesday

Phew!! I can breathe a sigh a relief. I have something to share for Holly's linky. I was starting to feel bad that I was not trying anything, telling myself there must be something I tried and then not being able to think of anything. So here it is, something I tried!!

My tried it is based on this article from Scholastic. I made an answer and question board.

Such a simple concept but I am loving it!! I just started last week. It took a few minutes of discussion for my students to get that they would be writing word problems to match the answer since in our daily morning math they write equations that equal the number of the day so they were all set and raring to go with that. Once we did a few samples together they got it and went to work. They just write a math word problem that would work out to the answer I have posted and then place it on their number.

The first day we checked through all the problems together, identifying what type of math we would need to do and doing the math.

Then we took a day off. Then I put up a new answer - students wrote and posted their questions - then each student took a different card and worked through it.

Then we took a day off. I posted a new answer yesterday. After students had posted their questions I had students model what they would be doing from now on with the questions. 1st they need to say what operation they think they will need to do, what words told them what operation to do and then perform the operation. We will be recording this in our problem solving space on our daily math sheets. So it will be one day make up a problem, the next day solve or check our work (well our classmate's work at least). It takes us about 5 minutes each day. I love that I can add any word after the number to make my students work harder for a question) and change the numbers to make it more challenging too.

Confession - I made the response area with the exact number of students I have - two students moved over the Christmas holiday. One of my students said "My number is not up there" and I was all like, of course it is, I made enough numbers for the whole class - only I numbered them in order forgetting that student number 1 and 12 had left!! Ugh!!

I have also included a template for making a Question of the Day board in your classroom in this pack....

Be sure to check out Holly's blog to see what everyone is trying!